Howard And His Tablets

What It's Good For

Well, last night, it was raining cats and dogs outside.


"Diana/Howards Morning Routine" 12-31-16

"Up at six o' clock; he dons his socks and off he walks, in a stupor.
Coffee and a newspaper first then off to the Jack In The Box, for breakfast and to use their pooper.
It's Howard's morning routine...yeah, Howard's morning routine...."


I was all packed up and ready to go out on a New Years Eve and busk, but decided that that would just put everything at risk of being soaked, or put myself in a situation where I had to decide how long I would wait for the rain to let up before just deciding to wrap myself in trash bags and make the 2 mile bike ride back to the apartment.

Plus, I had seen New Years Eve's in the past where throngs of people, interested only in the fireworks display, would converge on the Quarter. After the fireworks display was nothing but a large, slowly drifting cloud of smoke, they too would drift off, mostly concerned with finding their cars and fighting their way out of traffic.

It hadn't seemed like many had planned to watch the fireworks, and then walk around checking out buskers...

So, I set up my spotlight in my living room, tuned up the guitar, strapped on the harmonica and performed the first couple of songs that I might have, were I to have gone out.

There is a little bit of reserve in my performance, as I kind of had it in the back of my mind that the neighbors upstairs were ready to start banging on the floor with a blunt object, and I didn't get the kick into "overdrive" that seeing a tip go in my jar provides. But, I would say that this is pretty much what I do at the Lilly Pad for a couple or three hours almost every night...

There is also the fact that I am using the harmonica that I have already ordered a replacement for, because it has one reed broken off entirely (the 6 hole "draw" reed) and am playing around it, hoping that no notes are "missed." That was one of the factors involved in my deciding to stay in. Had I a brand new harp, I might have gone out there just to play it...

3 Forms Of Tablets

What next, from Howard?

Howard once let me hold on to his writing tablet, into which he was composing what should be a novel, when he is finished. I suppose I wasn't surprised to see that he had developed his own kind of shorthand (scrawl, chicken-scratch, encipher) using a single capital letter, for instance, to indicate the names of characters and places, amidst other text that looked like it was a prescription written by a doctor...

Then, about a year ago now, Howard had given me a bottle of tablets of a certain pain killer that he had gotten, prescribed by a doctor, after having had surgery.

Being one to "tough it out" and viewing pain as an important signal from the the body, which shouldn't need to be blocked out, he told me that I could sell the things, "see what you can get for them (i.e. what are they good for?)" and maybe eat a few myself, should I be so inclined, as part of the proceeds.

And now, a third form of "tablet," in the Samsung device he has given me, asking that I try to figure out "what it's good for."

I was to go over there to watch football on this New Year's Day, but there was heavy rain, and I have had my first cold in about 3 years, finding it easy to swallow down a few aspirins and go back to sleep, rather than fight my way from trolley to ferry, walk a mile through the heavy rain and then have to repeat the process in reverse.

I'll hang on to the tablet for one more night. I might try to shoot another little video, perhaps backing off a bit with the camera so that more than half of my face is visible, perhaps changing the angle of the spotlight so that my broken front teeth are in the shadows, as they are a the Lilly Pad, and bringing up the level of the natural ambiance of my living room, with its 16 foot high ceilings, in the process.